Louganis Switches To A Different Stage In His Life

May 25, 1999|By Philip Hersh, Tribune Olympic Sports Writer.

Junior prances across the stage, then does a pirouette in front of a mirror and announces with great enthusiasm, "I'm making the leap. I'm going to Appleberg to find a man! I'm going to Appleberg to come out! I'm going to Appleberg to be a ballet dancer."

Junior did that. So, in a manner of speaking, did the actor playing him.

Junior is a character based loosely on Ron Reagan, the former president's son, as imagined by playwright Larry Kramer in his 1988 farce, "Just Say No," which depicts Reagan as potentate in chief of New Columbia.

The actor is Greg Louganis, who in 1988 was filling his role as the greatest diver in history by winning a third and fourth Olympic gold medal.

Junior: "Junior is going to tell the world about Junior!"

Mrs. Potentate: "You are naked."

Junior: "For all the world to see."

Mrs. Potentate: "So everybody knows."

Junior: "Aw come on, Ma. Everybody knows. And I was born this way."

Six years after becoming the only man to sweep the diving titles at successive Olympics, Louganis let all the world see him as the greatest acknowledged gay male athlete in history when he came out at the 1994 Gay Games in Appleberg--a.k.a. New York. A year after that, he told the world he had AIDS.

Now he has become Junior in the Chicago production of "Just Say No," which opens Thursday at Bailiwick Repertory as the centerpiece of the PRIDE '99 series of plays and performances.

Long before this, Louganis had a life that imitated art.

His life. The one that seemed so charmed. The one that actually seemed to be taking place in front of a funhouse mirror.

Looking at himself, Louganis was not a diving champion, beloved in the way our sports heroes are, but an outcast--the dyslexic child of mixed-race parents who was given up for adoption; the kid who was called "dumb, stupid, retard;" the diver who heard teammates say, "Who's going to room with the fag?" when they left for international trips.

"I joke that had I been more emotionally and psychologically stable, I would have won just one gold medal," Louganis said. "To win four was compulsive, but diving was what I thought was acceptance and love. A lot of gays are incredibly successful, from the outside looking in, because they are driven."

Four years have passed since Louganis disclosed to Barbara Walters, in an interview promoting an autobiography released the same day, that he had been HIV positive in 1988, when he bled in the Seoul Olympic pool after hitting his head on the diving board. A decade has passed since he left sport for the acting career he had trained for in college. Nearly a quarter-century has passed since a 16-year-old Louganis won his first Olympic medal, a silver in 1976.

"Everything shapes you to be the person you are today," Louganis said. "The biggest thing would be self-acceptance. I'm happy with where I am. . . . I'm happier with who I am. The book ("Breaking the Surface") was a catalyst for me to examine a lot of things in my life that needed to be addressed."

In ranking Louganis 60th on its list of "100 Champions of the Century," France's L'Equipe magazine headlined him as "An Angel Who Came Down From Heaven." The story called him the Baryshnikov of the board, credited him with being the first human to make "falling head-first into a perfect delight," mentioned how his adoptive father said his son resembled a bird and said Louganis, by himself, embodied his sport.

But for much of his life, Louganis seemed the embodiment of a strange and agonized bird, Baudelaire's albatross. The 19th Century French poet called the albatross "king of the azure," but its regal bearing could be expressed only in the air. In the eponymous poem, after being captured by sailors and dragged on deck, the albatross is transformed:

"This winged voyager, how clumsy and weak he is. So beautiful before, how funny and ugly he is."

Like the albatross, Louganis was graceful only in his element. The Louganis who hid his sexuality from the public seemed clumsy and weak when he disclosed in 1995 that he also kept his HIV status from the doctor who treated him after the accident at the Seoul Olympics. The doctor wore no gloves as he sutured Louganis' bleeding head.

Thirty minutes later Louganis was back on the board, a winged voyager qualifying for a final he would win. He said in 1995 that he had been paralyzed with fear his blood could contaminate the water. Yet letting even those beyond his coach and closest friends know he was a homosexual with HIV had been more frightening at a time when ignorance about the disease often led to intolerance and discomfort.

"I think it could have been too much of a distraction for other people, not just for me," Louganis said of his silence.